It might be useful for people to post reviews, thoughts, comments on cakes that they've bought on Taobao. A lot of the cakes on Taobao are, well, mediocre, at best. It's good to know what's good and what's not. Sometimes some amazing looking things on Taobao are crap, while other crap have been decent.

I don't throw the dice on Taobao as much as I used to. I bought a 19 RMB Naka labeled cake out of morbid curiosity recently. I just wanted to see what a $3 357g raw cake labeled Naka could possibly be.

I haven't found any real treasure on taobao lately. This thread is a good idea though, I will post that Naka on here later when I have the link and some pics.

Jayinhk I gotta ask. Why would someone who lives in one of the best cities in the world for pu-erh, go trolling Taobao to roll the dice on a random cake? I can see why Marshaln would as he is the Tea Addict , and we all know addicts always try to have multiple sources to get there fix . I would be happy if there was one shop that sold decent pu-erh within a fifty mile radius of me. You can't walk down the block with out tripping over a guy selling bings in the street. I'm not saying you shouldnt buy stuff off of taoboa. I guess I would just think there would be enough in HK to keep me busy for a while, without the pitfalls associated with buying a cake from taobao.

gasninja wrote:I would be happy if there was one shop that sold decent pu-erh within a fifty mile radius of me. You can't walk down the block with out tripping over a guy selling bings in the street.

Fair question: I just want good deals on known bengs, especially sheng, and the variety of what's available online as far as known cakes far exceeds what I can buy in stores around me. Then again, the issue of fake tea is a big one, but I think I'm starting to figure out how to determine the good sellers from the bad ones. I've been buying on Taobao for quite a while (just not tea). As far as ready to drink shu, however, there is no shortage of that in the neighborhood for sure!

Last edited by jayinhk on Sep 21st, '12, 10:07, edited 1 time in total.

Absolutely, I've only been tea obsessed for a few weeks and I see that. The stores specialize in supplying the drinkers, and in this area, the restaurants, and people here are all about the shu. It's only the serious tea heads who go hunting down raw cakes for their personal stashes. A few stores seem to carry raw cakes with their own labels (again, at a premium) and others seem to charge premiums for standard cakes of aged sheng. Then there's the guy you told me not to go to who is supposedly a scammer.

Taobao is huge here in HK. It's cheap and easy to ship from China to HK by courier, and the amount of stuff available on there is staggering. I just bought a variety of kung fu shoes on there in US size 13. That is definitely not something you can find here in HK, and believe me, I've tried!

I've placed one order to test the service and the stuff arrived sefely. However, the customs in China or in my country, don't know, opened the stuff to checked it.

Got a couple of 2011 Xiaguan FT Bao Yan mushrooms. Which I have previously got from YNNS as well. I compared them and they are the same to my palate. I suppose the faking problem comes with pricey stuff and not the cheap stuff.

However, I am not sure how to check if the seller is reliable or not. I don't speak mandarin. I know there is like a box showing its reputation but when I translate with google is not really clear. Here is an example from the seller I mentioned above:

If anyone cant help me with this I will appreciate it.I am looking for something that shows how many sales the seller has. Not that the amount of sales will prevent me from getting a fake tea but at least is something.

Orders for cakes that are from XG probably won't be fake - it's not worth the effort, when you can fake Dayi and get more money.

Each individual item has reviews, and those are more useful than a seller's overall rating. You can find those above the little tabs on top of the item description

Edit: Now that I think about it, since you don't read Chinese, that's not useful. Instead, if you want to know how many times an item has been sold in the past 30 days, you can see it under the price of the item in question - the little orange number that says this 30天售出：0件 . This item has been sold 0 times in the past 30 days

gasninja wrote:Jayinhk I gotta ask. Why would someone who lives in one of the best cities in the world for pu-erh, go trolling Taobao to roll the dice on a random cake?

If you live within any practical geographic (or mailing service) range of taobao, shopping on taobao is almost inevitable Even though I'm not within a practical range of taobao, my wardrobe is becoming 50% taobao And I guess it would have been 80% if I lived in China. Not that I couldn't buy good clothing stuff in the States (not enough for short people indeed...), but I mostly do online shopping anyway even when I buy from chain stores in the States, so to avoid spending time in the mall.

For large puerh sellers on taobao, I feel a black list is more useful than a list of good sellers. There are numerous sellers that sell new sheng without a problem. Usually if you heard of someone selling fake tea, chances are 99% of their new sheng is still good, but then you may want to stay away from them.

i think a list of good sellers is much better to help wade through the overall chaff, perhaps with notes on what's good (or bad) about each one. I know as a newbie, I don't have the fake cake identification skills a lot of the very experienced members here do. I'm learning a little more from them every day. Here's hoping the two cakes I picked up today are ok. The tea itself looks ok to my untrained eyes, and is hopefully drinkable, even if they're fake. The reviews on the more expensive one seem positive though.